The Times Online described a conflagration where the British police kept neighbors back from attempting a rescue of people screaming for help from a burning house for reasons of “health and safety”. The police defended their actions saying they were just trying to prevent more people from getting hurt.

A pregnant woman, her husband and their three-year-old son were killed in a house fire early yesterday as police who arrived before the fire brigade prevented neighbours from trying to save them. The woman screamed: “Please save my kids” from a bedroom window and neighbours tried to help but were beaten back by flames and were told by police not to attempt a rescue….

Davey Davis, 38, a friend of the family, said: “It was the most harrowing thing I have ever witnessed. Michelle was at the bedroom window yelling, ‘Please save my kids’ and we wanted to help but the police were pushing us back and not allowing us near. We were willing to risk our lives to save those kiddies but the police wouldn’t let us. “Tempers were running very high, particularly with the women who were there, but the police were just saying we have to wait for the fire brigade because of health and safety.

“There were four or five police officers. They were here before the fire brigade. We heard the sirens and we came across to help but they wouldn’t let us.

Wikipedia distinguishes between a conditional and an indicative counterfactual in this way. “A counterfactual conditional, subjunctive conditional, or remote conditional, is a conditional (or “if-then”) statement indicating what would be the case if its antecedent were true. This is to be contrasted with an indicative conditional, which indicates what is (in fact) the case if its antecedent is (in fact) true.”

The difference between indicative and counterfactual conditionals can be illustrated with a pair of examples:

1. If Oswald did not shoot Kennedy, then someone else did.
2. If Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then someone else would have.

The first sentence is an indicative conditional that is intuitively true. The second is a counterfactual conditional that is not necessarily true.

The conditional counterfactual comes up in public debate all the time where outcomes based on a theory or a calculation are invoked to support an outcome. Examples are of this type of argument are: “If we didn’t invade Iraq then we would be safer”. “If we don’t turn ratify Kyoto the oceans will rise.” In this case the argument is “if we police let the neighbors try to save the burning victims, or if we attempted it ourselves, then there would be a greater risk.” The truth is that nobody knows. Nobody can say that “if Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then someone else would have.” It could have happened, but then again, maybe not.

One of more interesting uses of these arguments is to suppress risk taking by those who would willingly assume it. Suppose for example that your son or daughter was screaming from a burning house and you believed you had a reasonable chance to rescue the child, at what level of certainty would a British policeman be justified in preventing you from trying? And how would a British policeman know the risks of fire, given that they apparently don’t know enough to attempt the rescue themselves? Maybe it’s not important to know what the probabilities are, as much as it is important to know what the rules say. Rules are designed to enforce consistent behavior, but even when well crafted, they often reflect only the average probabilities. Whether or not it is safe to attempt rescuing a person from a burning house is a matter of judgment. The dead rulebook cannot know it. But in this age of liability and work rules, people are often less and less willing to exercise judgment when a rule can be substituted in its place.

It is not often appreciated that increasing demands for mandated safety and absolution from liability must be met by corresponding reductions in discretion and freedom. Like everything else, the desire to be cared for by a nanny bureaucracy comes at price: that of being treated like a child. There is no free lunch.

Update:

But “free” breakfasts may be another matter. Winston Churchill for one, wanted a whiskey and cigar with his morning meal and being who he was, got it. The Telegraph reports the sale of a menu on a 1954 BOAC flight in which Churchill, then aged 80, one year after suffering a stroke and on his last official trip to America, crossed out the prepared menu and substituted one of his own.

Rarely does one become a leader by following the rules. Rules are for the masses, as Wretchard pointed out “Rules are designed to enforce consistent behavior, but even when well crafted, they often reflect only the average probabilities.” He also quite nicely pointed out that we indeed desire a greater “nanny state”, at least according to the polls which in the last number of years have shown remarkable consistency.

Thank goodness this blog is full of independent thinkers who,I have little doubt, would break many rules at the appropriate time. It is a conundrum. The optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist is afraid it is so.

“Back before lawyers litigated common sense out of existence, whoever could, did. Amateurs, hobbyists and enthusiasts with useful skills were officially encouraged to lend a hand, and recognized for their contributions. Certification not required. Professional perfection not required. Good enough was acceptable back then. Not great but Better Than Nothing immediately available was generally accepted as an improvement over Highly Professional Special Response Teams two hours out. This elementary common sense is no longer generally accepted everywhere. The idea that it is better the local citizens do it tolerably, now, than waiting for the Feds or the State to do it perfectly, later, is more credible in Red States, and Red Counties of Blue States, than it is in the rest of the country. It is part of the rural vs. urban, renter vs. owner Culture War.”

This reminds me of the scene in “I Robot” where Will Smith describes how he lost his arm in an accident. The robot that saved him instead of a little girl did so because her odds of survival were worse than his. He summarizes that a human being would find those odds an acceptable risk in order to save a life even if his was forfeit in the attempt. That human quality that a machine (overly regulated government employee?) could never understand.

There are those who defy the odds to save lives; We rightly consider them local heroes. So what kind of world do we have when we are directed by logic alone? Is this the same argument that tells a young girl that aborting that baby is the logical choice (easier) than raising a child at an early age (a bit more difficult but certainly not impossible)? Bearing and raising children at an earlier age was not that uncommon in our grandparents age and gave start to some of the best minds of our time. But maybe life itself is becoming too difficult for some if you can not have that plasma screen or SUV. Sad.

Who sets the standards by which “Perfection” in emergency response are measured? The various training establishments and accreditation boards that bestow “legitimacy” and certify “professionalism” upon their graduates.

Even in Britain, unorganized militia volunteer fire rescue teams would unless forcibly restrained spontaneously act in response to emergencies, even when conditioned through decades of learned helplessness to stand idly by while awaiting “the authorities.”

Cannoneer #4, your comment #3 is excellent. Several years ago there was a grass fire on federal land near Valentine NE. The locals rushed to the scene to put out the fire (before it could spread to private land) where they encountered two Govt employees sitting in a pickup truck, watching the fire and eating their lunch. Then they had to go to a meeting to plan strategy before attacking the fire. I believe in this case the locals were getting the fire under control (fighting grass fires is something all ranchers know how to do) when the Feds finally arrived on the scene. Anyway, the people fighting the fire were admonished not to fight fires again because they weren’t certified and that didn’t go down well at all with the locals. Not sure if they ever had to get certified or not.

Cannoneer No. 4,
My first reaction was to think of the Muttawah incident also. The British are being steadily prepared for Islamification, not in any conspiratorial sense but emotionally as the consequence of their own bad choices. The origins of this vulnerability might be traced through the culture of Unionization that stemmed from the pathologies of the class system and underlay the rise of the Labour Party a century ago.

The idea that it is better the local citizens do it tolerably, now, than waiting for the Feds or the State to do it perfectly, later…

The kicker is that the expansion of government has been accompanied by a decline in its performance. Its presumption of exclusivity in a chosen role can be critiqued on two grounds. First is the question of what government should do and second is the question of what government can do.

In America, but not in England, the Constitution assigns some functions, such as coining money or regulating the armed forces, exclusively to the Federal government. The use of the Elastic and Commerce clauses to expand the Federal powers beyond those enumerated has blurred understanding of the distinctive nature of what was granted to the Federal government. These limits were alien to the English system in which Parliament is in theory now an absolute power, the King in Parliament. They are restrained only by custom and now by the even more arbitrary authority of the European Union.

The issue of competence, not in the meaning of moral capacity of of technical skill, is even more troubling because it is not susceptible to legalistic arguments. We get into the realm of Sociology here which always a slippery topic where prejudice can obstruct scientific study. The larger any organization gets and the more it attempts to do the less effective it is. Sixty or eighty years ago the government could in a crisis choose one task among fifty to do and marshall the best and the brightest and achieve miracles. Now the government attempts to do not one thing or fifty but a hundred and fifty using the ranks of the civil service. The results are failure. The more things government attempts the lower the quality of the workforce in each task. What you end up with is Airport Security. Not only does this result in sub-standard performance in those roles where large numbers have been hired to do jobs that were never meant to be the role of government at all but the dilution of talent and loss of focused oversight lead to failure in those positions, such as the police power, where we need government to function efficiently.

Many years ago I was in a similar position. I was visiting a friend, when we noticed smoke coming out of a neighbor’s house. As I went to the house, very thick smoke started billowing from the windows. At the same instant, a woman cried out, “My son’s in there.” I wanted to go inside to help, but I immediately thought, “If you go in there, you’ll die.” And I would have.

I waited for the fire department.

That was one of the most painful decisions I’ve ever made. I still think about what it says about me.

When the Columbine High School killings occurred, the police arrived and presumably began viewing PowerPoint charts on tactics and holding brainstorming sessions on how to handle the situation. When they finally entered the school they did so cautiously and at one point even evacuated a roomfull of students, leaving the badly wounded teacher there to die – alone – again, presumably because their procedures said to do it that way.

When the shooting at the rest home in NC occurred recently, the one and only officer available decided not to wait for reinforcements, charged right in and shot the nutjob who was causing the carnage.

Admittedly, there was a certain amount of discussion within the law enforcement community after Columbine concerning their response, and that seemed to result in a faster response, but I suspect those ruminations did not affect the officer in NC. He would have gone in anyway. And if it had been a fire instead of a shooter in the rest home I am sure he would have gone in as well.

Is there a Cromwell in the house? Bad as that was, it might be needed these days.

The idea that it is better the local citizens do it tolerably, now, than waiting for the Feds or the State to do it perfectly, later

Reminds me of a story. In 1964, the Good Friday Earthquake in Alaksa sent a tsunami down the US Pacific Coast. The small town of Crescent City, CA (just south of the Oregon border) has a peculiar off-shore underwater geography that makes it, essentially, a tsunami magnet. This tsunami hit with four waves, the first coming about midnight, the last (and most devastating) at about 1:30 am. Several people were killed and much of the downtown wrecked.

Pat Brown (father of Jerry), then serving as Governer, had spent the night about 100 miles south in Eureka, CA, there for a hearing on Redwoods or some such thing. His aide woke him in the morning and told him about the tsunami. He immediately headed north, getting to the scene at about 9:30 am, less than eight hours after the final wave hit, and the Governor was promptly forced to scamper out of the way of local citizens cleaning up debris with bulldozers.

If it had been my neighbors’ house on fire, with children inside, and the lady of the house pleading for someone to rescue her children, the cops would’ve had the choice of moving aside, at gun point if necessary, or being shot so I could attempt the rescue wearing the gas mask I keep in the boot of my auto.

That high pitched jet engine sound emanating from St. Paul’s Cathedral are Lords Nelson and Wellington spinning at hypersonic velocity in their sarcophagi. It is no wonder that Rule, Britannia! is no longer heard in the U.K! Bunch of fu—ing pansies!

Here in the U.S. most police vehicles have the slogan “To Protect and to Serve” emblazoned on the side. There must still be some worthwhile coppers in the U.K. but at the moment I’d be willing to trade one hick town deputy sheriff from nowhereville U.S.A. for an entire company of London constables.

Contrast the police actions in this case with those of the NYPD on 9/11!

According to their official figures the number of lives saved by the HSA is about 101 annually. Total industrial deaths are down by 422 but even they acknowledge that this is mainly because fewer of us are working down mines & more in offices. It doesn’t take many families unnecessarily burnt to death to make up for that. More importantly each 1% of GNP wasted costs 12,600 lives & the HSE certainly wastes many 5s of GNP.

One reason that hysterics yell “My child is in there” when they aren’t is that it is usually cost free to do so.
Some are simply honestly mistaken but some are deranged attention seekers and others are malicious. If caught and faced with punishment they will whine that they intended no harm, or even wanted to encourage others bravery, or they’ll plead if a would be rescuer was hurt that “there has been suffering enough” and if no one was hurt by their fraud then they will claim the “punishment is disproportionate.” Israel faces the same carping when it responds to the provocations of the arabs. We have been desensitized to hypocrisy and irresponsibility by excessive regulation and lawyering.

” Amid a growing row over the failure of two police support officers to try to save a boy from drowning, both the police and the fire service disclosed this weekend that their frontline staff are instructed not to enter the water in case they put themselves in danger.

Officers are no longer required to be trained in swimming or lifesaving. One police force closed its training pool five years ago for health and safety reasons after an accident and it has not reopened.

An inquest last week heard how two police community support officers (PCSOs) had stood by while a 10-year-old boy drowned in a pond in Wigan. Senior officers with the Greater Manchester force, which employed them, said they acted “correctly”.

The boy, Jordon Lyon, died despite a fully qualified police officer subsequently plunging into the water in an attempt to rescue him. His force made it clear this weekend that the officer was acting on his own volition and contrary to advice.

The case has ignited a debate over whether PCSOs, who receive only a few weeks’ training and do not have full police powers, should be scrapped….“They are not trained to swim and they don’t need to be able to swim to be a PCSO in Manchester,” said a spokeswoman, who refused to confirm whether the two officers could swim.

The situation with fully trained police officers is similar. The spokeswoman said: “The officers are advised not to go into the water. They are not trained in water rescue.”

Officers like Sergeant Craig Lippitt, who attempted to rescue Jordon by stripping off and diving in of his own volition, were acting against instructions, although they would not be disciplined for rescuing someone, the spokeswoman said.

Firefighters who attempt the same are not necessarily so fortunate. In March a 42-year-old firefighter, Tam Brown, saved a woman in the River Tay. He was later informed he could face disciplinary action…”

I recall reading ahout the first incident earlier. The terrible thing was that the depth of the water was not much higehr than chest high. They could have waded in and got the child.

That is one reason the police action was so egregious in this case. They are supposed to be sworn to uphold the law and serve the public. Not only did they fail to be personally valorous (yes it’s part of what they’re paid to do!) They didn’t know the entire situation, but they took it upon themselves to stop the neighbors, who did have better situational awareness, and knew the likelihood of children really needing rescue, from intervening when they were willing to step up to the plate.

It’s one thing for police to intervene to stop someone mentally ill from acting to harm themselves. It’s another for the government to play nanny with responsible adults who are willing to risk their own safety in order to protect their neighbors.

It’s a good thing Red Ken is no longer Lord Mayor, otherwise the London constabulary might next barricade military recruiting centers to prevent stupid, deranged, patriotic subjects from joining the army or navy. That way no young fool will risk injury of death in a misguided effort to serve the evil benighted kingdom.

Given enough solicitors and ‘modern managerial art’ every institution will drift towards process as against outcomes.

The belief that Frederick Taylor’s time and motion schema to optimize the assembly line in the best single way causes the modern method consultant to structure even chaotic events into a procedure model.
This always takes the form of a heuristics algorithm coupled to rote behaviors.
Hence an ever dumber crew can ‘master’ their role; so much less thinking or initiative is necessary — or even possible.

This last aspect is a feature not a bug for a society that affirmatively wants to reach down into the IQ distribution to man up with victim classes.

Dumber cops do contribute to crime. They also contribute to sloppy justice. In Washington D.C. the police force average IQ is so low that cases are commonly dropped because the arresting officer lost the paperwork/ screwed it up/ violated the 4th Amendment/ screwed his testimony/ couldn’t remember… No doubt such handicaps afflict other cities where the gene pool is too shallow to jump in.

On another tragic note: the Chicago Sun-Times filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, yesterday. Stepwise the entire industry is being snuffed out. The story is not what they write — the story is the dead of pulp advertising. We’re certain to see a collapse in real estate firms and auto dealers. And the few survivors will just give up on the newspaper: its cost per sale is just too high. H has just lost his number one support crew. They’ll be gone before the 2010 elections!

Armeggedon Rx,
It is already getting close to that situation in Berkley where the municipal administration and the police assist Code Pink in harassing the USMC recruiting station. If the civil servants not only refuse to perform the tasks that their employers think they have been hired to do but actively prevent others from doing so then the reasonable question is, “Why not save the money and send them home?” Would England be a more lawless place if The Plod went on vacation and told the public “So long and thanks for all the fish?” The purpose of government is employing staff not delivering services but simple self interest should limit the tendency to make it a complete farce. I will look for the Yes Minister clip in which Sir Humphrey explains to Bernard the fascinating history of the remit for the Department of Administrative Affairs by which their authority was expanded but their responsibility was progressively reduced.

Det Supt Peter McGuinness said: “I would like to commend our officers who were first on the scene.

“The Fire Brigade were only minutes away, but our officers were faced with a raging fire. They handled the incident as professionally as we would expect them to and they then worked long into the night.

Cannoneer No. 4,
Compare, “The Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand” and “our officers … handled the incident as professionally as we would expect them to and they then worked long into the night … South Yorkshire Police feel for the family and will continue to support them …”

The police exist to remind people, the masses, that their lives are unimportant and worthless, and that regulations and rules matter more than they themselves.

ONLY important people, like government ministers, pop celebrities, and so on really matter, and for them rules and regulations get thrown out the window.

It’s the same with the green lunacy.

That’s the function of the police, to keep people from self-organizing and thus become valuable and important, particularly to themselves. Finding worth and dignity in their own lives, and power in communal ties.

The elite aristocracy that rules most of the West hates and fears ordinary people at every turn. This is just one more example.

This was a matter of the neighbors lacking the proper credentials to do rescue work. The police are credentialed, but not for that sort of rescue work, which is reserved for firemen. In a Socialist state credentials count for far more than ability. Otherwise, the foundation of the system of patronage and influence that the socialist edifice depends on would be undermined. The Socialist bosses must decide who does what, even if the results seem ridiculous. But the results are not ridiculous, they are necessary for them to preserve their power.

“Amid a growing row over the failure of two police support officers to try to save a boy from drowning, both the police and the fire service disclosed this weekend that their frontline staff are instructed not to enter the water in case they put themselves in danger. Officers are no longer required to be trained in swimming or lifesaving”.

Why would public safety agencies change those rules? Is it because other factors make significant numbers of their cadres no longer physically capable of performing lifesaving activities? Could those other factors be related to the necessity of lowering strength and physical agility standards to accommodate politically acceptable diversity hiring requirements?

I ask this question not to impugn diversity in public service, but to point out the Law of Unintentional Consequences may have once again intervened to make things worse [in some ways], not better.

Have you ever been inside a burning house? It doesn’t say here if it was fully involved, although their inability to escape would indicate that. It also doesn’t say if rescue attempts would have involved entering the building, but from the outcome it doesn’t sound like all they needed was someone to hand children out the window to.

Inside of a burning structure black smoke rises and makes it as dark as night and impossible to see. Firefighters just look for a red glow and attack that. They get as low as possible to see even that much. It’s not like Hollywood where you can walk around upright in the glare of the fire and see where you are.

The bystanders would have been in a residence they were probably unfamiliar with even had the lights been on, but now it is pitch dark. Trust me it is, you literally can’t see your hand in front of your face. You trip over furniture, and everything else because you can’t see.

Superheated air makes it impossible to breath without an air pack, and if you tried it would fry your lungs. If that didn’t get you smoke inhalation and toxic gases would.

Again there’s not much information about the scope of the fire, but I doubt that it was an intact structure with some smoke curling out the window. How many of those willing to enter would have had to die before this story would have been attacked from the other angle of why did the police allow anyone to enter? Obviously to the bystander it seems heartless and even gutless, but it sounds like the cops did the right thing.

I also suspect these policemen went home haunted by the sounds of those screams and wishing they could have done more. But the reality is neither they nor the people outside were trained or equipped to successfully rescue those inside.

Also it doesn’t give response times of the fire service. Were the sirens that the witnesses alluded to the sounds of the fire trucks responding? If the PD is already on the scene, that should mean the FD is en route, and should only be a few minutes out. To the bystander listening to screams for help that seems like an eternity but in most cases it is a very short time.

Obviously what happened was a tragedy that costs several family members their lives. What very easily also could have happened would be an even greater tragedy where bystanders attempting rescues were killed as well, and that’s what the police were trained to prevent. They weren’t trained to rescue people from a burning building because without appropriate equipment to protect the rescuer the reality is there is not much anyone can do. So it was an unfortunate tragedy but the outcome could have been worse.

Meanwhile, Mark Steyn comments: “The characteristically moronic behavior of the braindead British coppers transformed it from a family tragedy to a national metaphor. I have written recently in Canada of the disturbing passivity of the ‘citizenry’, but Britain’s nudged it on a stage: Even if you understand the obligation to act in such a situation, the state will forcibly prevent you and (if recent form is anything to go by) ensure that if you disobey them you’ll be prosecuted – pour encourager les autres to remain obedient sheep to the government shepherd. . . . New Hampshire’s great motto, ‘Live free or die’, is not just a bit of bloodcurdling stemwinding but a real choice that Britons, Canadians and, alas, Americans ought to ponder: You can live as free men, with all the rights and responsibilities and vicissitudes of fate that that entails. Or you can watch your society decay and die before your eyes – as England, once the crucible of freedom, dies a little with every day.” Advice to the Brits: Tar, and feathers. At the very least. They’re cowards, after all. Let them fear you.

You know, usually the commenters are right here on Belmont. I hold many of you in very high regards, but today you are all stupid wrong.

Anyone who ran into that building would have ended up dead. How many of you have walked through 400+ degree heat with smoke to boot? Do you have any idea what that is like?

I’ll probably sully my someone name forever but, good grief, I blame the victims and not the police. If you are going to die anyways, jump out of the damn window and damn the torpedoes. The people in the trade center jumped 100 stories. Surely, a mother, a father, and the children can try 1 story or two. Burn to death? WTF was wrong with them?

Look at the damn picture from the article. That would be less than a 10 foot drop. Now I am being mean. This is truly a case of survival of the fittest at its best.

Steyn has it right “I have written recently in Canada of the disturbing passivity of the ‘citizenry’,” The passivity of the people who wouldn’t jump out a second story window. Wallrus, you are spot on.

Along with Someone @ 44, I understand the cops were only doing what they were trained to do: the FD was on the way, and the cops didn’t want the scene (and the burning building itself) cluttered up with stupid untrained civilians who would then also require rescue. They probably believed they were giving those in the building their best chance at survival by clearing things for the FD.

On the other hand, if I was away at work when a fire broke out at my house, and my neighbors were attempting to save my family from the flames but were stopped by police… I don’t even want to think about how I would feel about the police and the Nanny State. The mind rebels.

The real issue will come up in 5-10 years when police and fire services are deteriorating, but the police are still holding the crowd back waiting for a FD that never shows. When that starts happening, the point W is trying to make will be evident.

“Why would public safety agencies change those rules? Is it because other factors make significant numbers of their cadres no longer physically capable of performing lifesaving activities?”

You need to read the full article I linked to (I think it is there). The police stopped teaching its recruits to swim because one of the recruits drowned, so they closed all the pools and stopped training.

Cannoneer: When I was raised in SC I was told there was a state law that required anyone who happened upon a crime to do whatever they could to stop it, even if that included screaming as loud as possible.

Similarly there were laws in many sates that required medical personnel to stop and render assistance to a injured person. I imagine the lawyers managed to put a stop to that practice via lawsuits.

Back around 1974 there was a holdup at a bank in Tenn. The crooks took some hostages and sped off in a car, running over a policeman who tried to stop them. Enraged at this, a guy from a local TV station took their station wagon and floored it into the side of the crooks’ car. The hostages escaped as a result of the collision and one of the crooks committed suicide when he saw he could not get away, the rest were captured.

Around the same time period a couple of crooks held up a store in Oklahoma City and ran off. The store owner took out a rifle and began shooting at them. A nearby cop saw what was happening and began shooting at the crooks. A guy passing by in a pickup truck with the usual gunrack in the back window opened up too. Needless to say they got them. The surviving crook was irate, “We were just trying to knock over a store and we came outside and it was WWIII.”

Contrast all that with more recent experience. A Dominos pizza deliveryman was held up and responded by producing a Model 1911 and running the crooks off. The company fired him. A man in Columbia SC surprised a burglar, who shot at him, and he managed to shoot the crook with one round from a .22 rifle. The crook sued him and he lost his house. The man in Dallas who killed two burglars in the midst of robbing a neighbor’s house received numerous death threats

Lawyers and PC make cowards of us all.

Someone #44: Do you doubt for an instant that if the bystanders had come up with a ladder, or a stack of crates or a UPS truck to rescue those people that the police would have stopped them anyway? Whythell weren’t the police frantically looking for a ladder?

RWE, your memory of a an application of hue and cry in the Heartland 35 years ago indicates to me that you transitioned from boy to man a few years either side of that event. You may have been mentored, as I was, by Old School Gentlemen of the Greatest Generation, whose respect and approval was worth enough to you to accept the challenge of traditional rites of passage.

My Country ‘Tis of Thee is not the Sweet Land of Liberty it was supposed to be. But it was once, and perhaps if enough of us old enough to know what we’re doing and still can survive the coming Tribulation, it wil be again.

My grandad was a motorcycle cop and then a detective in the 1930′s, then years after they got rid of him because he opposed the bribe structure, he came back to law enforcement as chief deputy sheriff for the county.

One of my more memorable high school teachers was a naval aviator before WWII. The ship he commanded sailed into Pearl Harbor on 10 Dec 1941, guns manned and ready to fight their way in to the relief of the presumably beseiged garrison.

Another of my high school teachers was a bombadier on a B-25 that launched from the carrier Hornet on 18 April 1942 on a somewhat famous mission.

Today it is hard to believe we had people like that, just “around” as ordinary men. And the ordinary men all worked hard for a living and took care of their families.

Heros are ordinary folks in extradrordinary situations. Most of those WWII man were are parents and grandparents. My father was WWII intelligence major and he never fired a shot in anger. But what he and his friends did after the war made us safe and I was always aware of thosr ordinary men.

The Trade Center had lots of heroes that extraodinary day. Many saved others at the loss of their own lifes. After all 50K were the possible population of the towers and onlt 3k were killed, That shows most were heroes.

The number killed was that high only because there was a message telling folks it was Ok and go back to their floors. Thankfully most ignore that and took their own counsel and decide better to save themselves than wait.

Personlly I would have attacked the cop if that was my neighbor and prevented me from saving someone. I agree any that stops that action are cowards and lower than the low. They should be scorned and abused by their neighbors. Tar and feather sounds right.